What the FY2027 request buys
Verbatim from the R-2A exhibit for project ACX-01 of PE 0603468E. This is the budget justification's own description of work that has not happened yet — the one thing no other level of the budget carries.
- Expand operational testing into increasingly complex and contested environments, including electronic warfare scenarios, to rigorously evaluate system robustness and adaptability. - Advance multi-platform collaboration by integrating heterogeneous teams, such as manned-unmanned formations, to assess the scalability of the autonomous teaming capabilities. - Maintain compatibility with other related combat autonomy efforts, enabling rapid integration and testing of new capabilities within the operational framework.
The FY 2027 decrease reflects the shift from scaling to live flight to concentrated focus on solutions that demonstrated the strongest technical performance and operational promise.
FY2026: the year under way
Prior-year accomplishments and current-year plans from the same exhibit. Context for the FY2027 plan, not a series — an activity partitions its project exactly in the request year, but can under-cover it in earlier years.
- Initiate incorporation of F-16 aircraft into the AIR integration and testing pipeline and iterate development through testing. - Scale the AI-driven autonomy to four-ship operations with increased complexity. - Improve speed and predictivity of model development. - Incorporate dissimilar capabilities, non-stationaries, and deceptive environments to the multi-agent AI training. - Quantify the robustness of AI agent performance by rigorously evaluating its response to realistic operational uncertainties, such as sensor degradation and communication loss, and validate its effectiveness in critical mission scenarios like Offensive and Defensive Counter Air (OCA/DCA).
Three years, and no five-year plan
An R-2A activity publishes the prior year, the current year and the budget year. The FYDP outyears exist at project and program-element level and are deliberately absent here rather than inferred. Estimate types are colored and never summed into one figure.
| Fiscal Year | Estimate Type | Amount ($M) |
|---|---|---|
| FY2026 | Enacted | 51.6 |
| FY2027 | Request | 32.2 |
This activity is 6.4% of project ACX-01's FY2027 request and 6.0% of PE 0603468E's. In the request year the activities under a project sum to it exactly; in the current year they under-cover it in about 9% of cases, so an activity's delta can legitimately exceed its parent's and the two must not be compared row to row.
14 activities in project ACX-01
Every R-2A line of this project, largest FY2027 request first. Linked where the activity has enough of its own narrative to carry a page; the rest are shown in full on the project page.